Medusa
by axleonex
Summary: Years after Raz saved the world at whispering rock, new students have enrolled to the camp. Only it is no longer a camp, it has now become a prison. Psychics are forced to attend there. Children are brainwashed to obey. Those that are uncontrollable are put into fatal experiments. This is the story of one girls escape.
1. Chapter 1

_(This is technically psychonauts with characters from that show "Ruby Gloom", but I'm only pulling character personalities from that show into here. So I wouldn't really categorize this as "crossover")_

XXX

Midnight, the moon is waning. A young girl, no older than ten, is running like her life depends on it. Maybe it does. As she runs, no one can see the tears in her eyes as her friend calls out her name.

"Medusa! Please come back!"

She can't run back. She doesn't even turn her head around as she follows the person in front of her.

"Isis" Medusa cries, "Please, don't leave me behind."

Isis turns her head around to answer her, "I won't" she says. The girl extends her arm for Medusa to grab a hold of it. Before she can grab it, a surge of electricity engulfs Medusa's hand, shocking Isis and causing her to tug her hand away in pain.

Medusa cries in shame. Isis comforts her while running, "Don't worry about it. Just keep running."

And they run. Run further than anyone else ever has. Run far past tower searchlights. Run farther than the minefields. Faster than the search party, and away from the search dogs.

An hour of running, Medusa's legs begin to give out. "it hurts..." She pleas.

Isis crouches down with her back facing Medusa. "Ride on my back." She says.

A slimmer of hope enters Medusa's face. She smiles as she climbs on Isis's back. Isis is a strong girl, she's easily able to carry Medusa across the mountains surrounding the camp. She comes to a stop once they reach a high cliff. The only thing stopping them from escaping whispering rock is a jump over a steep valley onto the ridge on the other side.

Medusa quietly says, "You can make the jump. You should go, I can still go back..."

Isis laughs a little at this thought of this. "what, you really think you're holding me back? You're my good luck Medusa, I couldn't have made it this far without you! I need you to make it to the other side!"

This makes Madusa smile, but she can tell that Isis is breathing heavily. She can see that Isis has pushed her limits. "No Isis, you can't."

This comment makes Isis grin. "Is that a challenge?"

Madusa is shocked by this comment. "huh? No! It's not!"

Isis looks forward at the ridge. She starts readying herself by backing up. "because it sounds like a challenge!" Her eyes blaze with ambition.

Medusa pleas, "Isis! Don't!"

Too late. Isis launches herself forward and jumps over the valley. For a moment, it's as though they're flying. Time slows down as they're midair over the valley. They make it to the other ridge, only they don't make it. Instead of landing on the platform at the end of the valley, Isis's body slams at the edge of the cliff. The recoil causes Medusa's hands to give out. All Isis can do is scream as she sees her friend fall into the dark abyss of the valley.

"Medusa!" she screams. Tears burst out from her eyes.

Medusa can't even form words, all she can do is cry as she loses sight of her friend Isis.

XXX

_(Please critique me!)_


	2. Chapter 2

XXX

Medusa lies asleep on a pile of rubble. She stays there for hours before a single drop of water lands on her forehead. Medusa slowly opens her eyes.

She dizzily lifts her head up. When she does, she rolls down the pile of rubble and crashes into the nearest wall. "wha... Where am I?"

She looks around herself. It's dark, but her eyes soon adjust to the darkness. She sees that she's in temple. No, not a temple, ruins of a temple. There are markings all over the walls, boulders blocking any exits, and broken pillars barely keeping the ceiling intact.

A feeling of uneasiness falls upon Medusa as the thought of solitude overwhelms her. "Am I alone?" She begins to sob. "I miss my parents." She breaks out crying until the area begins to shake. She stops herself from crying after she realizes that her loud sounds may cause the unstable ceiling to collapse.

"*sniff* * sniff * I need to get out of here..." She looks around the ruins. She feels around the walls looking an exit of some sort. When she passes the pile of rubble she landed on, she notices something buried under it.

She digs through the rubble, hoping to find some something that will aid her. She was terrified to find a metallic sphere with two large flashlights for eyes staring back at her.

"Ahh!" Medusa falls back in fear. As she does, a surge of electricity jumps out of her hand and into the sphere. The sphere's lights begin to blink. Beeps and buzzing noises begin to emit from the machine. Steam starts coming out of the muffler that's connected to it's side.

"who's there?" Says the robot in a distinct female British accent. "Who took me out of stand by mood?"

Medusa is completely awestruck by the robot's expression. "A talking robot!"

The robot continues. "Who are you? What do you Want?"

Medusa unewasily replies "Medusa... " She makes herself loud and clear so the robot can hear her. "My name is Medusa!" The room begins to shake.

The robot yells, "keep you're voice down! What are you trying to do? Bury us under rocks!"

Medusa whispers, "My name is Medusa..."

The robot yells, "I heard you the first time!" The room shakes for a bit when the robot said that.

"you'r not very good at keeping quiet..."

The robot groans. "just put me back on stand by mode and get out of here"

"but... there's no way out of here..."

"You don't look up often do you?"

Medusa turns her head up. She sees a small shimmer of light coming out from a chamber door that's in the ceiling.

"Honestly" The robot scolds, "How do you think I got here?"

"but I can't climb there..."

The robot gives out a deep sigh of anxiety. "Look, there's some rope with a grapple on my back. Take it and go."

Medusa goes on the robot's back and takes the grapple hanging from it. Medusa sighs, "Isis was right, I should've gone rock climbing with last week. Mrs. Robot, can you show me how to do this?"

"No, I've already wasted enough power talking to you. Now put me on stand by mode and figure it out yourself. Push the red button on my back."

Medusa does as the robot asks and pushes the button. "Thank you" Medusa says as it powers down. She looks up at her destination, and begins swinging the grapple rope.

XXX

Author's note: Right now I'm just setting up the predicament Medusa is in. This'll connect to psychonauts in a bit, so stay tuned :)


	3. Chapter 3

Medusa looks up at her target. It's an open door twelve feet high inside the ceiling from where she's standing.

She throws the grappling hook. The rope doesn't even make it through the door. When she tries again the weight of the hook manages to land through the door, but doesn't cling on to anything and falls out when she tugs on it.

Medusa tries several more times to hook the rope through the door. After constantly missing or not clinging on to anything, she gets frustrated and throws the rope to the ground. "This isn't working!"

She looks around the room she's in. Alone, she decides to head over to the robot for some company. She pushes the button on it's back.

"Please help me again." Medusa asks. "The rope didn't work."

"Not my problem." The british robot says in a snide tone.

"But..."

The robot interupts. "Now leave!"

"But I wanna get out of here!" Medusa starts crying, causing the room to rumble.

"quit crying and grow some backbone." Medusa calms herself down, the robot continues, "I told you how to get out of here. If you can't figure it out just shut me down and leave me alone."

Unsure what to say, Medusa stays quiet for a moment.

"Are you still there?" The robot asks. Medusa is confused by the question.

"Medusa! Come back! You've forgotten to shut me off!"

Another moment of silence passes by. "She's gone. For the love of God, what a cruel fate I've befallen! Now I'm stuck here alone until my power goes out. I already feel my power cells running low!"

Medusa speaks, "uh, hello?"

"...You're still here?"

"Can you not see?" Medusa opens up a small panel on the robots side.

The robot protests, "Stop that! Don't play with that! You don't know what your doing!"

Medusa connects a wire to the flashlight eyes of the robot. "The camp instructors taught me how to work with machines. I know how this thing works."

The eyes of the robot begin to flicker on. "You're wasting power! Why you little..." the robot stops in mid sentence to analyze the little girl standing in front of it. "Why, you are little. What's a kid like you doing all the way out here? Don't you know this place is dangerous?"

Medusa sits next to the robot. "I fell while trying to escape."

The robot demands a clear answer from it's stationary position."Escape? What are you babbling about?"

Medusa pulls in her knees to hug. "I was told I was going to a summer camp. A camp for astronaut training, but it wasn't a camp, it was a prison camp. My friends who had come here before said things used to be different. They said it used to be fun, and that the teachers were really nice to the students. Now there's nothing but people with guns watching us all the time, waiting to shoot us for when we do something wrong."

Medusa lifts her hand up in front of herself. The robot watches expressionless as a surge of electricity runs through her arm. "We were sent there to learn how to use our powers, but they..."

Medusa has trouble forming her next words. Images of the past enter her mind; children being publicaly electricuted, a child being shot at for being too dangerous, and roommates being dragged out of they're beds while Medusa pretends to sleep.

"They punish anyone messes up too much. Take them to 'detention'. We don't really know what they do... but... I've seen things. Things that aren't..."

XXX

Medusa remembers one of the first things she saw while exploring with Isis. While all the other students were sleeping in they're cabins, Isis and Medusa went off to explore the new camp buildings. The first thing Medusa saw through a building window were mutilated body parts of some of the missing campers; An arm with stitched fingers, Eye balls out of they're eye sockets, and something she'll never forget, brains floating in jars attached to tiny machines.

XXX

"Natural..." Medusa finishes.

Perhaps out of respect, the robot remains silent. Medusa eventually asks, "why are you here?"

The robot groans at the thought of answering the question. "I don't see why it matters. Afterall, I'm stuck here until someone digs me out"

Medusa presses on. "but I told you how I got here. Shouldn't you tell me how you got here? We're both trapped. We may as well... talk."

"Correction. You're trapped here, I'm waiting for a rescuer. Speaking of which, shut me back off. I've already wasted enough battery power as is."

"But-"

"I said shut me down. I have no intention of speaking with you anymore."

Medusa doesn't want to shut the robot down. She's afraid of the solitude the dark temple will bring her. Regardless, she does as the robot instructs and pushes the shut down button. The robot powers down. Medusa finds herself closing her eyes as she slowly tries escape the reality of the world around her.

XXX

Author's note: Feel free to PM me for suggestions :)


	4. Chapter 4

_XXX_

"_Medusa! don't do it!" A red haird girl yells. "We can pull through this together!"  
_

_Medusa throws her hands in the air. "Ruby, Look at me!" Her hands bliss with electricity. "I'm a walking disaster! Everything I do I mess up! I've tried, and I've tried, and I've tried, but I'm just a failure!" Medusa's body glows with electricity. Ruby backs away from her. "Don't you get it? I'm just a broken time bomb!" Medusa bursts out with energy._

_XX_XX

A wave of electricity flies through the room. Medusa wakes up gasping for breath. She soon realizes that she is no longer in the camp, just trapped in a dark temple of solitude.

"What is it now?" The robot asks. "Why did you turn me on this time?"

"It was an accident" Medusa replies.

"an accident you say? You've wasted my power cells for an accident? Well why don't you accidently come here and shut me off so I don't accidently run out of power and die out. Hmm?"

A sense of shame befall Medusa. Perhaps its the anxiety or lack of sleep, Medusa begins to tear up as the robot scolds her. "I'm sorry" Medusa cries, "I'm just scared. I've never been alone for this long."

"Oh pipe down! I thought I told you to stop crying. The last thing I need is for your tears to cause another cave in."

Medusa takes deep breaths to try and calm herself.

"now listen." The robot says, "I understand why a girl your age is scared but right now you can't be scared alright? You don't have time for that. I suggest you occupy your time trying to get through that ceiling door or go look for some food eat."

Medusa's stomach grumbles. The thought of food makes her mouth water."Eat?" She asks, "Like what?"

"Figures you humans can't handle your own bodily functions. I suggest you look over there, where the ray of light is hitting. Vegetation should grow there this time of year."

Medusa looks over to where the Robot referenced. She sees a small ray of light coming from one of the crack ceilings, hitting one of the pillars. She goes over and surprisingly finds moss and mushrooms grown around the lighted area.

"Don't eat any of that." The robot warns. "Bring it here so I can determine which are poisoneous."

Medusa does as she's told and brings as much as she can carry to the robot.

"Let's see..." The robot scans through the plants. "Most are safe, but you need to remove the brightly colored ones and umbrella shaped ones from the batch. Once you do that, put them in here so I can heat them up to kill any bad bacteria" A panel comes out of the robot's side revealing a pan.

Medusa follows the robot's instructions and places the non brightly colored/umbrella shaped plants into the pan. A timer starts while robot heats the food up. As the clock begins to tick down, Medusa tries speaking to the robot to ease her nerves.

"Mrs. Robot, why are you here?"

The robot isn't sure whether to answer Medusa's question. "I can tell you, but you won't like it."

Medusa tilts her head in confusion. "what do you mean won't like it?"

The robot scans the girl carefully, unsure whether she's ready to hear the truth. "You see, I believe I'm the reason your trapped here. Indirectly of course."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm the reason that camp you went to exists."

Medusa is bewilered by the robots words. "How?" Medusa asks.

"As you may have noticed, your psychic abilities are amplified by this general location. The reason for that is because of a meteorite that hit here over five hundred years ago. It's properties seem to give supernatural beings amplified abilities, making training here perfect for youths such as yourself. It accelerates the growth of abilities without any harmful side effects, an ideal way to train psychics to manifest they're abilites quickly and efficiently."

Medusa is confused by the robots words.

The robot sees this and begins to speak slowly and loudly for medusa. "The-big-special-rock-is-the-reason-the-big-bad-pe ople-brought-you-here. I'm-the-one-who-told-the-big-bad-people-about-the- special-rock!"

The room rumbles during the robots statement. Medusa is baffled by what the robot said. "But" Medusa asks, "did you know this would happen?"

"That I would end up trapped here for over forty years? No, I can't say I did"

"No." Medusa says firmly, "did you know they would make a place that would kill all my friends?"

The timer rings. Medusa's food is ready. The robot says, "Your meal is ready, take it and shut me off."

"answer my question."

"No." Said the robot. "shut me down"

Medusa can't help but think of the friends she once had back at the camp. She can't help but remember the misery that was bestowed on each and every one of them because of the existance of the camp.

"Answer my question!" Medusa yells, causing the temple to shake again.

Medusa angerly awaits for a reply. The robot remains silent.

It says, "Yes. I knew this would ultimately happen. You have your answer now, shut me down."

Medusa can't form words as a result to what the robot said. She quietly goes over to the robots back, and pushes the shut down switch. As the robot powered down, it sputtered a few last words. "I told you you wouldn't like it."

Medusa stands there quitely for a few minutes. Unsure what to think about her new robot friend, she goes over to the pan to obtain her meal. She lifts the lid to reveal freshly baked vegetables prime and ready for eating. She picks one up and puts one in her mouth. She sticks her tongue out in disgust.

"this tastes bitter" She says.

XXX


	5. Chapter 5

Medusa sits quietly with her back against the temple wall. She's staring at the inactive robot across the room from her. She can't help but think about how and why the machine condemned her and her friends to that horrid camp.

The lifeless robot stares back at her. Although it's shut down, she can't help but get angrier at it as time passes by. Medusa has been electrocuted, shot at, injected with drug serums, and put into solitary confinement. Despite the countless ways the camp instructors degraded Medusa, the worst experience she got was the feeling of helplessness as they made her watch her closest friends die in insidious manners.

Medusa stands up and turns on the robot.

The robot powers up. "What is it you want?"

"why did you do it?" Medusa asks firmly.

"do wha-" The robot stops itself mid sentence, fully aware of what Medusa was implying. It was hoping to avoid the question, but the look in Medusa's eyes said that she needed answers.

"Do you really want to know?" The robot says in a stern tone. Medusa nods.

"Very well. I could tell you I was programmed to do it, but in reality I still would've helped the jelly-bags if they had given me the choice anyhow."

"Jelly-bags?" Medusa asks in confusion.

"It means humans dear. Me and the other robots nicknamed them that because humans are so squishy."

Medusa nods her head to show she understands the concept. The robot continues.

"I was sent here on a seach for the native american legend known as 'whispering rock'. The government just began researching parnormal anomalies, and whispering rock was a perfect place to begin these investigations."

Medusa listens closely to the robot. She has difficulty understadning, but the robot does it's best to keep it simple for the ten year old girl.

"The reason we were looking for the rock, however, was not to do research on it. We heard it's radiation mutated the nearby wildlife, and so they sent a team mixed with humans, robots, and psychics to investigate the cause. Medusa, we wanted to turn the rock into a weapon."

Medusa lets out a soft gasp. The word 'weapon' is something Medusa understands clearly.

XXX

Medusa was lying in he cabin bed with her eyes closed, trying to go to sleep. She was on the bottom bunk bed when the girl above her spoke.

"Hey Medusa?" The red haired girl whispered. "Do you believe what those people said?"

Medusa remained silent for a moment. A part of her did believe what they said was true, but she couldn't let her friend know what she thought. Medusa replies, "I don't see why it matters?"

The girl on the top bunk replies. "It matters because we should know who we are." The girl on the top bunk lowers her head to see Medusa. "We're here for a reason Medusa, a good reason. It's not right to be what wrong people ask us to be."

Medusa turns to her side to face the girl. "But what if they're right?" Medusa asks.

The girl replies. "If we really are tools like they say we are, let's at least be the tools we want to be."

Medusa turns over again, signifying the conversation is over. The girl returns to her bunk to try and get some sleep. "Besides" the girl finishes. "If we don't become who we want to be, we'll lose more if we're right than if they're wrong."

XXX

Back at the camp, instructors consistently tried to indoctrinate into the students that they're 'weapons'. Tools that exist to benefit the country. Killing machines that exist to live and die for they're duty. That they're powers make them born for the sole purpose to serve.

"I know that weapons can't bring anyone any good." Medusa said.

The robot replies. "I suppose you and I have different opinions on that."

Medusa was about to argue, but the robot didn't allow it by continuing it's story. "As we got closer to the destination, the affects of the rock soon became apparent. We setup an outdoor lab to observe and record the rock and nearby wildlife. After a few days, the human members of the crew soon began hallucinating. While this happened, the psychics of the crew noticed that all they're powers were becoming amplified. As weeks went by, the humans went slowly insane, believing the rock was a god of some sort. Eventually we had to..."

The robot paused, reminiscing on whatever it had done. "Anyway, we were unable to return samples to the agency we were working with. We were, however, able to radio them what affects the rock had on our crew members. There was no doubt in my mind that they were going to use the rock to amplify the powers of you 'psychics'."

Medusa bites her lip. "But." Medusa has no easy way of asking her next question. "why did _you _ do it?"

The robot replies, "I had no choice on the matter. It was what I was designed to do."

"But you'd have done it anyway right? Why?"

"It doesn't matter, I did because I was programmed to do so."

"It matters to me, I want to know why you were okay with it."

"I was okay with it, because I had no other choice."

Medusa yells, "You said you'd have done it anyway even if they didn't force you! Why!?" The room shakes. "I want to know why people thin I'm a weapon!"

The robot shouts. "Because you're all monsters!"

The room stops shaking, an eerie silence fills the room. Medusa goes over to the robot to shut it off.

"Now listen here Medusa." The robot says in self-defense. "I didn't mean what I said, but people have good reason to fear you. I want you to look at-"

Medusa shuts the robot off, causing it's eyes to power down. Medusa sits next to the robot and hugs her knees. She begins to cry as she desperately tries to comfort herself by repeating a phrase. "It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter."


End file.
